The role of instructions and intention in learning

Abstract

This thesis investigates how manipulating intention to learn (learning orientation) through verbal instructions affects learning in a range of putatively associative and implicit tasks. Within three different paradigms, learning orientation was manipulated so that learning was either incidental to, or aligned with (i.e. intentional) the aims of the task. The first series of experiments investigated sequence learning, as measured in the serial reaction time task. Sequence learning was found to result reliably under incidental conditions and was selectively improved by instructions promoting discovery of a relational rule describing a set of probabilistic contingencies. The second series of experiments used the prototype distortion task, where it has been claimed that implicit learning of a category of prototype-centered stimuli can occur automatically as a result of exposure. Using a visual search task as a means of incidental exposure, equivocal evidence for the implicit status of learning in the prototype distortion task was found, and instructions directing participants to memorize the stimuli resulted in greater evidence of learning the similarity structure of the category. Finally, the third series of experiments assessed generalization along stimulus dimensions following a difficult discrimination task. Instructions directing attention to a particular stimulus dimension promoted rule-based generalization and facilitated a dissociation in the pattern of generalization obtained as a result of reducing rule applicability on test. The results suggest that human learning is highly susceptible to learning orientation, which has implications for the way implicit learning should be viewed as a psychological construct. Theories of learning, whether single- or dual-process, need to better account for this seemingly pervasive role of learning orientation.